Driving through Fox River GroveIl (near Barrington Il) the other night, we noticed xmas lights strung up along what appeared to be a castle on a hill on the other side of the highway, which we had never seen before. (more)

Tyler Cowen summarizes a paper by Ken Rogoff on the International Development implications of freeing Capital Market-s. Many of the benefits kick in only after countries have achieved a particular level of financial integration. Improvements in integration, starting from low levels of integration and development, often have increased the volatility of consumption. Trade integration is associated with faster increases in health and infant mortality, but financial openness is not. (more)

Economics professor. (more)

Douglas Engelbart's famous Mother Of All Demos took place on Dec 9, 1968. (more)

Futurist (more)

Stiff interviews hot programmers: Guido Van Rossum, Linus Torvalds, Tim Bray, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, Steve Yegge, Peter Norvig, James Gosling.

Fat Client Text Editor that provides GUI interface specializing in HTML. (more)

Fabrik is a visual programming integrated development environment implemented in Smalltalk and designed at Apple Computer by Dan Ingalls, Scott Wallace, Yu-Ying Chow, Frank Ludolph, Ken Doyle and others during the mid-1980s. It consists of a kit of computational and graphic user interface components that can be "wired" together to build new components and useful applications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrik_(software) (more)

aka UnitedAutoWorkers, Labor Union (more)

Stephen Shapiro seeks Goal Free (No Goals) Living. Passion and Aspiration are fine. Another form of Engagement? Contra a Telic model?

FaceBook had an outage today, which affected not only its own site but every Like Button on the Net.

Phillip J Eby is refining his Self Improvement approach by adding simple new Habit-s. Focus on habits, not results. But don't get the wrong idea: you don't need to instantly start working out for an hour a day or do marathon housecleaning sessions every weekend. What you want to do is work with the smallest possible actions first. Substitute one food. Pick up or put away one thing. Why? Because this will actually build a habit faster than more intensive efforts will! Here's the thing: a habit is something you do automatically. To do it automatically, it has to be unconscious. So, you have to teach your unconscious mind to do it. That means it has to be simple.

co-founded and served as spokesman for the online social directory and networking site FaceBook.. Hughes was the coordinator of online organizing for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign on My.Barack Obama.com, the campaign's online social networking website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hughes

Hal Macomber questions Russell D Archibald's definition of the State Of The Art of Project Management, and offers some contrasting views. The emperor has no clothes. Our process mentality towards project management comes up short. Certification that someone knows a body of knowledge has nothing to do with delivering successful projects. (more)

subset of Social Software focused on people linking to other people (in hopes of getting money or sex via Weak Ties - Networking) (more)

Giles Bowkett has a paper Calendar system for maintaining momentum ("streaks", "don't break the chain" are the references) in new Habit-s (Self Improvement, CheckList). (more)

Venkatesh Rao on Routine But Cannot Be Automated Tasks (To-Do List, Habit-s). Trivial meta-content means it is not hard to plan or schedule this stuff, or figure out and create the necessary enabling pre-conditions. Non-trivial content means the actual work is hard and cannot be automated. Blogging is an example for me... Besides blogging and book-keeping, other activities in this bucket include working out, healthy eating, relationship maintenance activities like calling your parents regularly, professional networking, clearing your inbox and cleaning your home... How important is it to solve Rb Cb A problems? It depends on whether costs or consequences accumulate faster (think of the consequences of missing your schedule as lost revenue; the analogy is quite close). That’s the Tempo Book angle: there is a rhythm to Rb Cb A problems involving costs and consequences... There are five basic ways to solve Rb Cb A problems... If none of these easy strategies (the first 4) is available, you have to take the difficult way out: Habit formation. (more)

Software Engineering writer (more)

Michael Kinsley on David Brooks' new book On Paradise Drive ISBN:0743227387 - He starts by slicing and dicing the American population into categories and subcategories, each with its own ValUes and Habit-s and sartorial preferences. Then he turns around and puts us all back together again, reinterpreting his previous examples of our differences as evidence of our essential similarity. It's a bravura performance and always entertaining, if not always convincing. The Brooks sociological method has four components: fearless generalizing, clever coinage, jokes and shopping lists... At the very least, Brooks does not let the sociology get in the way of the shtick, and he wields a mean shoehorn when he needs the theory to fit the joke.

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